From East Brunswick to Hollywood: Author Brian Selznick on his new film 'Wonderstruck'

A young Midwestern boy and a young girl from New York share a mysterious connection 50 years apart.
USA TODAY

On set of the film "Wonderstruck" based on his novel of the same name, East Brunswick's Brian Selznick's imagination comes to life once again with his sophomore film debut. "Wonderstruck." Selznick adapted the novel into a screenplay.(Photo: ~Courtesy of Mary Cybulski)

As a child, Brian Selznick started on his artistic career path by fashioning tin foil sculptures in his parents' East Brunswick kitchen and taking local art classes.

Earlier this year, the film adaptation of his young adult novel, "Wonderstruck," premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and had its U.S. debut on Oct. 7 at New York's Alice Tully Hall, where it received a five-minute standing ovation.

"I'm very lucky," he said of his experience on the film "Wonderstruck," which he adapted from his 2011 work. "I was working with really fantastic people and the process itself went really great."

The energetic Caldecott Medal winner and bestselling author of "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," "Wonderstruck" and "The Marvels," is a humble name dropper of the best kind — praising his well-known colleagues and speaking with awe of their accomplishments.

"The New York premiere was particularly exciting for everybody," Selznick said. "It's a movie that takes place in New York and it's about New York in so many ways. It's a love letter to New York. It really did feel like coming home. Watching the movie with the New York audience was really fun 'cause they got all the New York references — a few little jokes here and there that are East Coast-centric. To be there with Todd Haynes, Julianne Moore, the three amazing kids and the producers with this huge audience giving you a standing ovation is a really dreamy feeling."

"Wonderstruck" comes to the silver screen Oct. 20 in Los Angeles and New York in a limited release by Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions. It is expected to be followed by a wider release this fall. "Wonderstruck" competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Just a day after the London premiere, the U.S. premiere at Alice Tully Hall was the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival.

A growing career

The 1984 East Brunswick High School graduate went onto Rhode Island School of Design before publishing his first book, "The Houdini Box" in 1991 while working in a children's bookstore in New York. More books followed. Some he wrote and illustrated. Others he illustrated only. Then "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" hit the shelves in 2007, spending more than 40 weeks on the "New York Times" bestseller list. That release and the ensuing Academy Award-winning movie adaptation "Hugo" by Martin Scorsese catapulted Selznick into a different stratosphere.

Fast talking and enthusiastic, Selznick brings his own passions to each and every project. With "Wonderstruck," the Museum of Natural History features prominently — especially a wolf diorama — as does New York, the deaf community, silent movies, communication and secrets.

And there are always mysterious secrets.

"It's about all of these things that I've loved my entire life," he said.

Directed by the Oscar-nominated Todd Haynes, "Wonderstruck" stars Oakes Fegley as Ben; frequent Haynes collaborator and Oscar winner Julianne Moore in two roles, Lillian Mayhew and Older Rose; Oscar nominee Michelle Williams as Elaine; Jaden Michael as Jamie; and Millicent Simmonds as Rose. Simmonds, a newcomer, is deaf and was found through a video audition "that made everybody cry." The cast and crew sends Selznick into a "Wonderstruck" moment of his own — "a little bit shell shocked and in the back of my mind still amazed," he said.

Selznick said he learned a lot about his characters watching the actors portray them on set and then on screen.

"It's really exciting to see real actors take on these roles that I had made up," he said.

"Wonderstruck" weaves together the lives of Ben and Rose, children from two different time periods — 1927 and 1977. Both members of the deaf community, Ben and Rose yearn for their lives to be different — and not necessarily because of their deafness. With just one clue, Ben seeks a father he has never known, while Rose dreams of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook. As children, both set out on individual journeys that somehow intersect.

The cover of Brian Selznick’s book, “Wonderstruck,” which soon will be made into a film by director Todd Haynes.(Photo: Courtesy of Scholastic Press)

Selznick said the story is one of "communication" and more personally, connected the concept of growing up deaf in a hearing family to his own experience growing up gay in a straight family. Moreover, he saw the story as a way to show "how we make our own families."

"It's how we go out into the world and surround ourselves with people that we love and build a family," he said. "It was a reader who said they loved how 'Hugo' was about a boy who makes his own family and how we make our own families. I hadn't exactly realized that was what 'Hugo' was about, but of course it is. I took that idea and I very consciously put that idea into 'Wonderstruck.' I wanted it to be about these children who are looking for themselves and find the place where they belong and find their family."

Selznickadapted "Wonderstruck" into a screenplay soon after the book was published. Though he penned scripts for theater in high school and college, this was his first for film — and his first as a professional.

Sandy Powell, the costume designer from "Hugo," was staying at Selznick's San Diego home and spied a copy of "Wonderstruck." She read it in a night and decreed that Haynes — a longtime friend and colleague — should direct a film version.

"That was the first time I thought about it as possibly being a movie," Selznick said. "The story was designed to be a book and written to be experienced as a book because the interactions of the drawings and the words were important to the creation of the entire story. Of course if it was going to be a movie, I would lose that structure — the words and the pictures."

Powell encouraged him to think about it as a film and "Hugo" screenwriter John Logan suggested Selznick pen the script himself. Logan added that he would take Selznick "under his wing," giving him notes and helping with the adaptation if needed.

Brian Selznick(Photo: ~File photo)

A problem of twos

For Selznick, the biggest problem was one of twos — how to keep the concept of two stories in two different time periods being told in two different ways. In the book, Rose, who is born deaf, has the 1927 story told in pictures. That is intertwined with Ben, who is born hearing and becomes deaf, told through words in a 1977 setting.

"The idea for the experience in the book was for us to experience the world through the eyes of a deaf person. If you can't hear, then most of the way you experience the world is through what you see," he said. "I thought if I drew the story, then that visual world would parallel the experience of the deaf character. In trying to figure out how to make this into a movie, I realized I could tell the story of this girl in 1927 like a black and white silent movie. That way we would watch that part of the film and we would think it was black and white and silent because its 1927 and that's what movie's were like then, but eventually we would realize the character is deaf and the reason that it silent is because it parallels the silence of Rose's experience."

A stickler for details, Selznick envisioned Ben's 1977 scenes "as if it was a movie from that decade, awash period-correct color, sound and techniques.

"I imagined it a little bit like beginning like a Robert Altman film like 'McCabe and Mrs. Miller' that takes place in a very rural area. My story starts in a rural area," he said. "And then I thought we could film it a little bit like Martin Scorsese's 'Mean Streets.' In a way, I was kind of imagining I was making 'Mean Streets' for kids."

Once he had the concept under his belt, he adapted the story so it would work cinematically. That included a lot of shortening — the 533 page book contains 249 words of text and 284 pictures. A two-week time period in the book became one night and three clue's about Ben's dad became one.

"That really entailed making everything happen in a more concise manner," Selznick said. "His (John Logan) first note when I gave him my first draft of the screenplay was to cut the first 50 pages in half.'"

Once he had a viable version of the screenplay — as approved by Logan — Selznick passed it onto Powell, who brought it to Haynes, who was finishing the Academy Award-nominated film "Carol."

"After he read the screenplay, he told me he wanted to make it into a film," Selznick said. "I was really so excited. I had been a fan of Todd's from his first movie "Poison" that came out in 1991. It was such a thrill."

The two met up in a cafe in New York and sat all day going through the script page-by-page.

"Todd told me his thoughts about the film and how he wanted to film it and asked me to make a few small changes and add a few things into the screenplay," Selznick said. "I was able sit with one of my favorite directors of all time and talk to him about how he envisioned making my story into a movie. So.... it was really fun. Overall, the screenplay that I wrote is the screenplay that Todd shot."

Author Brian Selznick and Michelle Williams leave the screening of 'Wonderstruck' during the Cannes Film Festival. The movie was presented in the Official Competition of the festival which runs from May 17 to 28. (Photo: Ian Langsdon, EPA)

Watching the process

Seeing his characters and their setting come to life always holds fascination for Selznick. Unlike with "Hugo," Selznick was on set in New York, both upstate and in the city, almost every day.

"It was really great," he said. "When you see these 70's scenes in the movie, they feel incredibly accurate to the time period partly because the cinematographer Ed Lachman was using real film cameras and using techniques and zoom lenses used in the 70s. The quality of the film really feels like it was shot in the 70s and Sandy's (Powell) costumes feel really accurate to the 70s and the 20s as well."

Selznick said Haynes also wanted the film to depict the dichotomy of the wealth, glamour and prosperity of 1920's New York and the seediness, dirtiness and danger of 1970's New York.

"Every department kept that in mind as we were preparing to shoot," he said.

Known for their individual styles and award-winning films, Scorsese and Haynes never did an movie appropriate for children before a Selznick adaptation. Like Scorsese did with "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," Haynes saw "Wonderstruck" as a family film, about children and appropriate for children to view.

Seznick admits "it's weird" seeing his book characters come to life.

"In my book, I know my characters as far as they are doing what I need them to do. I don't really know much more about them than what I have written. But for an actor to play a character, they feel they have to know the characters' entire life and really live inside the character no matter how small the part is. I have this strange experience where I feel like I am meeting my own characters for the first time when I see them on screen or see what the actors are doing to embody these people."

Vivacious, colorful and equally adroit as his printed works, Selznick's clever style of weaving a story through art and text is a unique technique — still unnamed — of his own. It has won him accolades, acclaim and awards. He has had opportunities he never dreamed of — attending the Academy Awards, being on a Scorsese set, red carpets. Yet, he says starting any new project takes him back to his book roots and even feelings of insecurity.

"When it's time to sit down and make a new book, nothing's changed," he said. "It's still scary."

Brian Selznick, a member of the East Brunswick High School Class of 1984, visits the humanities classes at his alma mater to tell them about his author/illustrator career on Feb. 27, 2014. Selznick is the author of “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” later made into the Academy Award-winning movie “Hugo” by Martin Scorsese.(Photo: ~File photo)

Selznick asserts emphatically that his current success was not what he envisioned when he was drafting his very first book in his childhood bedroom after college.

"I could not have imagined it," he said. "I had a long part of my career where nobody was reading my books. Because of that, it has made me very appreciative of where I am and I don't take anything or any of this for granted. "

It is the new friendships, such as the one with Powell, who was the costume designer on "Wonderstruck," that he treasures the most.

"That's one of the biggest surprises that happened — the friends that I made,' he said. "I knew it would be exciting to visit the film set and I knew it would be exciting to see how all these amazing people would interpret the story I made up but I was really surprised I ended up becoming friends with all these people."

His latest book, "The Marvels," was published in 2015. Selznick has already penned that screenplay and the search for a director is on. Further, Scholastic will publish the "Wonderstruck Movie Scrapbook" on Oct. 28. His next book, "Baby Monkey Private Eye" is set to be published by Scholastic in March. "Baby Monkey," a collaboration between Selznick and his husband, writer and professor David Serlin, is for younger readers and weaves together picture, beginning reader and graphic novel all into one for ages 4 to 8.

Typically onto the next project even before the last one ends, Selznick is currently working on stage adaptation of some of his books, including a musical version of "The Houdini Box" commissioned by the La Jolla Playhouse in California. There are new book projects he is beginning as well.

And to think it all began in an East Brunswick kitchen playing with tinfoil.